Sturmtiger 1/48 AFV Club - A Small Update 4/2/16
Mar 22, 2016 22:31:54 GMT -5
deafpanzer, Deano, and 1 more like this
Post by afvfan on Mar 22, 2016 22:31:54 GMT -5
A friend of mine had barely gotten this one started. When he realized he really didn't want to tangle with it, he asked me if I wanted to fool with it. As I used to love working in 48 scale "back in the day", I told him sure, I'd build it, thinking about how much fun I used to have with the numerous Bandai kits I built. While working on my previous two builds, I decided I needed to change things up a bit. What better way to do that than to move down a scale (kind of a rarity for me). So, after letting this kit "mellow" on the shelf for the past year, I moved it to the workbench.
Opening the box, I found he had only attached the front transmission cover, the final drives, rear hull plate, and the rear fenders. Of the six pieces, three were slightly crooked. I couldn't do anything to fix them, so I decided to keep going compensating for the misalignment caused by the out of line pieces. I did run into a problem when I mounted the engine deck. Seems there's very little overlap where the deck meets the rear superstructure. I had to get a bit creative getting that seam sealed. I can't say if this is poor design of the kit, or something brought about by the slightly misaligned parts
I've got the basic tank built and ran squarely into the kit's first major issue. In a hare-brained oversight, AFV Club molded zimmerit on the front and rear panels, but left the sides smooth. Now, there are (among other obstacles to work around) 9 small raised squares representing the fender mounts on each side. After fighting to get the zim laid down while working around these, and failing miserably 3 times, I got frustrated and shaved them off. I finally got a passable coat down after that - It's not really to my liking, but I will learn to live with it.
The final thing I've done, so far, is to assemble the main gun. Here I ran into another issue. The pivoting system for the gun's movement is pretty poorly executed. I came up with a fix that should prevent any problems of the gun jumping out of it's mounts (unfortunately, no pics). The exhaust jets around the muzzle were barely indentations, so I drilled them deeper and, finally, I added a PE insert in to the barrel that depicts the rifling of the weapon (barely visible in the pic).
Updates on this one may be a bit slow. Working in this scale now has made me realize how bad my eyes have gotten, how fat my fingers have grown, and how shaky my hands are.
.....but, more to come.....
Opening the box, I found he had only attached the front transmission cover, the final drives, rear hull plate, and the rear fenders. Of the six pieces, three were slightly crooked. I couldn't do anything to fix them, so I decided to keep going compensating for the misalignment caused by the out of line pieces. I did run into a problem when I mounted the engine deck. Seems there's very little overlap where the deck meets the rear superstructure. I had to get a bit creative getting that seam sealed. I can't say if this is poor design of the kit, or something brought about by the slightly misaligned parts
I've got the basic tank built and ran squarely into the kit's first major issue. In a hare-brained oversight, AFV Club molded zimmerit on the front and rear panels, but left the sides smooth. Now, there are (among other obstacles to work around) 9 small raised squares representing the fender mounts on each side. After fighting to get the zim laid down while working around these, and failing miserably 3 times, I got frustrated and shaved them off. I finally got a passable coat down after that - It's not really to my liking, but I will learn to live with it.
The final thing I've done, so far, is to assemble the main gun. Here I ran into another issue. The pivoting system for the gun's movement is pretty poorly executed. I came up with a fix that should prevent any problems of the gun jumping out of it's mounts (unfortunately, no pics). The exhaust jets around the muzzle were barely indentations, so I drilled them deeper and, finally, I added a PE insert in to the barrel that depicts the rifling of the weapon (barely visible in the pic).
Updates on this one may be a bit slow. Working in this scale now has made me realize how bad my eyes have gotten, how fat my fingers have grown, and how shaky my hands are.
.....but, more to come..... 
( You're a BRAVE man!)
